


Keeping Watch

by Sliceofmooncake (Aesoteric)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Hero Worship, POV Blackwall, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 09:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9813845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoteric/pseuds/Sliceofmooncake
Summary: "[...] Only give me leave, unworthy as I am, to follow you."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Quote from "Midsummer Night's Dream" Act I, Scene II.
> 
> SPOILERS for Blackwall's quest and backstory.

Someone started calling him her hound since she brought him back from Orlais, back from the gallows. That’s not such an insult in Ferelden as it is other places, but they mean he follows her everywhere like she’s got him on a string and that it’s pathetic the way he looks at her. If he stopped to mash every man’s face into the mud who’d said as much there wouldn’t be a clean face in Skyhold. There’d been that one man he’d sent to the healers with a bloody nose, but considering the filth that’d come out of his mouth, he’d been lucky to walk away with his jaw in one piece as far as Rainier was concerned. So long as they keep their mouths off the Inquisitor they can say what they like about him. Let them call him names, he’s earned it. He’s only still here on her sufferance. She didn’t have to forgive him.

A man shouldn’t have so many chances, not when he’s mucked them up the way he has. The Tourney could’ve done it for him; if he’d been smart he would’ve settled accounts in Markham, bought his parents out of debt, taken Ser Geoffrey’s offer and maybe made something of himself. He’d thought it would be some sort of grand gesture to show just how much he valued the nobles’ coin and approval, so he’d pissed all the prize money away on drink and women and was flat broke less than a year later.

If he thought it was beneath him to take the nobles’ handouts, then going crawling to the army was a new low. Yes, ser; no, ser; may I lick your boots, ser? He’d made captain and it wasn’t enough, he had to beat the bastards at their own game a second time and make sure it stuck. Then Gaspard. Easy money, he’d said, one afternoon’s work would set him well on his way. Rainier will not think of the caravans, not even now.

It would have served him right if running from the gallows had been his lot from then on, but then there’d been Blackwall, a hero in the middle of nowhere who thought he was something worth salvaging. His last shot at redemption, and he’d kiss the statue of Andraste’s feet for it every day for the rest of his life, he swore. Blackwall should not have died. There was not supposed to be a world in which men like Blackwall died and Rainier lived, so because Rainier was a thief and a murderer, he took the man’s life when he died. Wore his name like stolen armor and tried to convince himself that it wasn’t lying if he made it into something the man would have been proud of. He’d even gotten used to the way it felt when she showed up.

That’s all it took: one woman come wild out of the Hinterlands with the sun in her hair and he’d run after her like she was the last bright thing in the world. It might’ve started then—no, no 'might’ve' been about it, though he’d swear up and down he didn’t know until later. Of course he admired her, anyone with an ounce of sense would. She was the kind of person you sing songs about, and not just the kind of song soldiers liked. She was honorable, principled, and braver than anyone her size had any right to be (going after a dragon with a bow and arrows, Maker’s Breath). Then there had been one completely ordinary afternoon, the two of them in the stables talking about something unimportant, and someone had called her from the courtyard. She’d turned to look over her shoulder, smiled at him in apology and walked away to attend to whatever it was. Just that, just the sight of her leaving had hit him suddenly like a pike to the gut.

Oh no. Not this. Not her.

He’d dragged himself up the stairs to the hayloft and hurled every single curse he could think of in the silence of his own head. This was the sort of thing that happened to green recruits—becoming enamored with a noblewomen they’d only seen from afar, or even nursing a devotion to a commanding officer. It made for a good joke and eventually they got it out of their system because there was nothing real to it, and there never could be.

The Orlesian chevaliers had some fancy ideas about dedicating yourself to someone you knew you’d never have, but it made for fine ballads and not much else. Besides, she wasn’t any more a noblewoman than he was a knight. He’d had a few noblewomen after he’d won the Grand Melee and liked their perfumes and velvets well enough, but he’s seen the Inquisitor up to her elbows in mud and she’s the first person he’s ever genuinely wanted to call “My Lady”.

But she wasn’t his anything. She might be Solas’, maybe, if the man would get his head out of his ass. He liked Solas well enough—alright, no, he didn’t. Too-clever mage with his slanted eyes and sideways answers for everything, what the hells was he playing at?

How many blocks of wood had Rainier whittled into toothpicks after that watching Solas circle her like she was something he didn’t trust but couldn’t leave alone. Hungry. Confused. Snapping at her as if to make sure she knew he still had teeth. There was an open invitation in the space she left him over her shoulder, at the edge of the fire at night, and in the stillness she kept around him. She was waiting for him. Finally one evening she took his hand and pulled him to sit at the edge of the firelight. Placing herself just a bit in front of him, she reached back and deliberately twined her fingers with his, staring at the rest of the camp with an expression that said she would do something deeply unpleasant to the first idiot who made a comment. Luckily, no one did. Solas didn’t stay long, he was so tense he was practically vibrating like a lute string, but he stared at her as if she’d just done something impossible again, and when he made to leave she released him. But he always came back, and that’d been the start of them where anyone could see.

They were discreet. They couldn’t really behave like a normal pair of sweethearts with her being head of the Inquisition and Solas being…whatever he was. But they had ways of seeking each other out. Fact is, when she told Rainier that she was meeting Solas for language lessons, he’d thought it was a cover.

“Solas knows written elvish, and no one in my clan but the Keeper is supposed to know how to read it.” She’d bounced on her toes lightly, grinning. “I feel rather sacrilegious.”

“They do say that reading’s the gateway to darker things,” Rainier shook his head soberly. “Next you’ll be talking to strangers, staying out at the tavern all night, gambling—”

She’d shoved him and he’d snickered.

“So what are you learning, ancient poetry?”

“Well,” and she might have actually blushed under her tan, “Most of it’s useful things like ‘This step is booby-trapped’ and ‘Do not disturb the angry ghosts’. Practical elvish for adventurers.”

Of course Solas would know poetry, ancient bloody elvish poetry that no one else could read. Pieces of her history he could tease her with to bring her even closer until the two of them were clustered practically cheek-to-cheek over a manuscript. Rainier was proud of himself that his voice had come out so steady.

“Most of it?”

“Oh, shut up. Don’t spoil my fun, Blackwall.”

No, Blackwall wouldn’t have spoiled it for her, so Rainier didn’t either. He raised his eyebrows and shot her a mocking salute.

“Pretty sure denying a commanding officer her fun is punishable by a week on latrine duty, I’m not that hard up for entertainment.”

Afterwards he found Cassandra and the two of them beat each other nearly senseless in the practice ring. Flat on his back with ears ringing he could almost stop thinking, _she’d blushed_.

They were good for each other. Something deep and steady settled in her eyes, and she made the years drop off of Solas’ face until you could see what he’d looked like as younger man. When word got out, instead of pitching a fit like she’d feared, the whole of Skyhold seemed to find it endearing that their Inquisitor was, well, not human, but mortal. With the world spinning off its axis people were hungry for familiar things, and there was nothing so universal as having a sweetheart. Even Solas was granted some kind of dispensation for his strangeness; she’d chosen, and that was apparently good enough for everyone but him.

It wasn’t Rainier’s place to tell the Inquisitor what to do or what she deserved, but he’d be damned if he’d leave her unprotected with someone who raised his hackles like Solas did, not a second time. So he’d wait and he’d watch like a hound should. If one day whatever Solas was hiding slunk out of the shadows, Rainier would be there, and Maker help the thing that showed its face.


End file.
